The 25-year-old closes in on a return to full fitness after almost 18 months on the sidelines and has since returned to training and even completed a 45-minute comeback for United's Under-21s against Huddersfield on Tuesday.
The Dutchman spoken with The Athletic about his recovery and the pain over the last year and a half which has affected him not only physically but mentally too.
“I have a lot of patience but, in this process, I learned that I have more patience than every other person in the world at this moment.
“We had a lot of injuries and my injury needed a lot of attention,” Malacia said. “So with the medical part, at some point we decided, ‘OK, you need some extra people around you to help you, to be there working with you every day to focus only on you’.”
Weeks later the young defender had an inflammation around the affected knee and he had to undergo yet more surgery causing him to start over again.
“I had to start my rehab over, basically,” he added. “I had one day to be disappointed and then I had to be like, ‘OK, we go again’.
“At the end of the day, we want to do everything right, at the right time. We don't want to rush into things. It is going well, very well, now — step by step. Maybe it went a little bit too quickly before, so we've learned from that.”
“I think at the end of the day, everything I did, even if it was a mistake or something, I won’t even see it as a mistake because it’s a lesson.
“I think everything in life is already written for me. I had to go through this whole process to be where I’m at now, so I wouldn’t do anything different.”